y eyes comparable to
that of nightly cold.... A more killing curse there does not exist for
man or woman than the bitter combat between the weariness that prompts
sleep and the keen, searching cold that forces you from that first
access of sleep to start up horror-stricken, and to seek warmth vainly
in renewed exercise, though long since fainting under fatigue."

The hardness of the bed and the coldness of the room were not all that
interfered with sleep. The short corridor in which I was placed was
known as the "Bull Pen"--a phrase eschewed by the doctors. It was
usually in an uproar, especially during the dark hours of the early
morning. Patients in a state of excitement may sleep during the first
hours of the night, but seldom all night; and even should one have the
capacity to do so, his companions in durance would wake him with a
shout or a song or a curse or the kicking of a door. A noisy and
chaotic medley frequently continued without interruption for hours at a
time. Noise, unearthly noise, was the poetic license allowed the
occupants of these cells. I spent several days and nights in one or
another of them, and I question whether I averaged more than two or
three hours' sleep a night during that time. Seldom did the regular
attendants pay any attention to the noise, though even they must at
times have been disturbed by it. In fact the only person likely to
attempt to stop it was the night watch, who, when he did enter a cell
for that purpose, almost invariably kicked or choked the noisy patient
into a state of temporary quiet. I noted this and scented trouble.

Drawing and writing materials having been again taken from me, I cast
about for some new occupation. I found one in the problem of warmth.
Though I gave repeated expression to the benumbed messages of my
tortured nerves, the doctor refused to return my clothes. For a
semblance of warmth I was forced to depend upon ordinary undergarments
and an extraordinary imagination. The heavy felt druggets were about as
plastic as blotting paper and I derived little comfort from them until
I hit upon the idea of rending them into strips. These strips I would
weave into a crude Rip Van Winkle kind of suit; and so intricate was
the warp and woof that on several occasions an attendant had to cut me
out of these sartorial improvisations. At first, until I acquired the
destructive knack, the tearing of one drugget into strips was a task of
four or five hours. But in time